Always Check The Shelter For Yourself

I just came across a very scary account of a man who lost his dog and because of his nature of not trusting the system, it turns out his own due diligence was his own reward.

Here's the gist of it... Sometimes it pays to check on the pound and verify what they've told you because if the wrong person does not care about the job or the lives under their care, this could have been a pretty shitty ending for one dog's life.

And to imagine this pup, lost, alone and scared in this strange animal prison where no one he loves is there to get him, is a terrible thought.  It's rather unacceptable he the pup got where he got, and if he had not been found, we presume the pup would have been put to death for no good reason.

VERY UNACCEPTABLE Orange County Humane Society! (they serve Costa Mesa and Newport Beach animal control.)

This is an edited rendition of my peer's post about his journey of trying to discover if rumors of his dog being captured by Animal Control were true.

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A friendly person calls me last night and tells me that they saw Animal Control attempting to capture <Fido>. <The names have been changed to protect the innocent.>

I call animal control and they say that it might not have been a successful capture.  The only dog catch yesterday (at the time of this event) was in a different location in COSTA MESA Humane Society.

I check the Humane Society website which indicated that only two dogs were brought in yesterday. The closest match was a German Shepherd (<Fido> has shepherd in her, but looks like a black lab).

I call the Humane Society to check on the shepherd catch.

They said the German Shepherd looks like one and had no collar or chip.

I ask if they had a black dog with a white chest with a collar but no tag and micro-chipped come in yesterday or today.

They said no and reminded me that their site is accurate and no dog matching my description has been brought in.

I GO down to the Humane Society anyway. 

I convince them to let me in Ward D (the area where visitors can't go unless they are pretty sure a dog is theirs) to see the German Shepherd. The new dogs are in the front, the German Shepherd is definitely not mine. I convince the guy who takes me to allow me to go down the entire Ward for just my own peace of mind.

He lets me and half way down there's <Fido> sitting with her pink collar on. I'm so shocked that I can't speak and get choked up to the point I can't talk. The guy runs down surprised and just points, "This is your dog?"

I found out that it was late in the day and the employee only checked to see if <Fido> had a Costa Mesa pet license. When she did not, they impounded her WITHOUT looking for her chip, and it seems to me that they were never going to check the chip. 

Additionally, they never added her to their system.

<Fido> was literally unfindable and would have met her end had I not happened to go down there and convince them to let me into Ward D.

Relieved and incredibly annoyed.

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This is the actual pup the story was about... Cocoa

We here at Vader's World find this to be a horrible chain of events in the Orange County Humane Society shelter where this took place.

How horribly lazy it was of the process, to ignore a dog just because it did not have a dog license from one city, and to not continue their due diligence in checking on the dog's story.  Despicable.

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We all want to help, but the numbers of stray and lost animals are crazy impossible to embrace.

Folks "own" around 83 million dogs and 20% of dog "owners" have two dogs. The crazy people who have three or more dogs number in the 10% category. While 20% of "owned" dogs come from shelters.

Did you know that around SEVEN MILLION dogs/cats find themselves in shelters each year?  It's estimated that up to three million pets are killed (sure, I can use euthanized, but let's spell it out), killed each year in shelters.  30% of shelter dogs are reclaimed by their owners each year, while barely 5% of shelter cats are reclaimed by their owners each year.  WTH is up with that folks?

- Humane Society Pet Statistics.